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One of the constitutional powers of the President of the United States is to nominate and appoint judges of the Supreme Court, with the qualification that such appointments be undertaken with the advice and consent of the Senate. This procedure — like many others crafted by Founding Fathers who did not anticipate the rise of political parties in America — has long since become enmeshed in partisan posturing. Whichever party holds the White House typically seeks to elevate a Supreme Court nominee who is ideologically aligned with their party, employing varying strategies to push their chosen nominee through the approval process depending upon whether they, the opposition, or neither party controls the Senate. One uncommon (but not unprecedented) circumstance presaging a Supreme Court battle occurred when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly passed away on 13 February 2016, leaving President Barack Obama to nominate a replacement. (Although Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, over the last several decades most court vacancies have been created through the retirement or resignation of sitting justices rather than death, thereby providing Presidents with ample time to consider and nominate their replacements.) Since at the time of Antonin Scalia's death, President Obama had less than a year remaining in his final office while the Republicans held a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate, the GOP served notice that they could simply delay confirmation of whomever President Obama nominated replace to Scalia until after the upcoming presidential election in the hopes that they might regain the White House and then put forth their own nominee instead. This chain of events, naturally, prompted criticisms about one side's playing games with the Supreme Court confirmation process and the other side's engaging in hypocrisy for objecting to something they themselves had advocated on previous occasions. This rhetorical battle was reflected in various images circulated by social media that portrayed members of both parties as opportunistic flip-floppers who justified whichever approach suited their side at the time. One such image featured quotes from Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader (and a Republican), advocating (in 2016) that Scalia's seat remain open until after the next presidential election, while stating (in 2001) that the President is entitled to tilt the judiciary in the direction that he feels appropriate: Verifying the accuracy and meaning of the first quote is fairly straightforward: On 13 February 2016 (the day Scalia died), McConnell's words were widely reported The second quote stemmed from hearings held in 2001 by a Congressional Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts regarding the judicial nomination and confirmation process (for all federal judicial appointments, not just Supreme Court justices), hearings that focused on the vital question of what role ideology should play in the selection and confirmation of judges. Senator McConnell, as a member of the Committee on the Judiciary, averred (in part) that the role of the Senate should largely be to examine the competence and the integrity and the fitness of a judge to be on the bench rather than a nominee's political ideology, that the Senate should defer to the President on the question of ideology, that the President is entitled for the most part to tilt the judiciary in the direction that he feels appropriate, and that he (i.e., McConnell) had accordingly approved every one of judicial nominees put forth by President Bill Clinton (a Democrat): McConnell concurred with a previous statement offered by Jon Kyl, a Republican senator from Arizona, who said (in part): Another image featured similar flip-flopping statements from Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, a Democrat who previously served as Senate Majority Leader: As with the McConnell image, the quotes attributed to Reid were contradictory and presumably based on whatever course of action might be politically expedient for his party rather than on a consistent (non-partisan) political position. The provenance of these statements was also not difficult to ascertain: On 1 March 2016, Reid was quoted as follows in an article about Republican opposition to holding nomination hearings for Scalia's replacement prior to the end of President Obama's term: (Technically, the Constitution simply states that the President shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... Judges of the supreme Court; that document is silent on whether the Senate is obligated to hold hearings and vote on such nominations.) Evidence of Sen. Reid's 2005 statements was equally easy to come by: During a 19 May 2005 Senate session convened in consideration of the appointment of Priscilla Owen as a judge for the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (which had, among other similar nominations, been blocked by filibustering Democrats): During those proceedings, Senator Reid maintained the wording of the Constitution did not require that every nominee receive a vote: A minor quibble could be made about Reid's speaking of judicial nominees and not Supreme Court appointees, but that difference seemingly had little bearing on the overall thrust of his statement.
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